Business View Magazine | October 2020

390 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 continues. “What we envision is attracting the younger generation into town and renting along the Ridge Road area. Once they plan on starting a family and they’ve already fallen in love with the borough, they will give up the rental, purchase a home here, and leave the rentals vacant for the next group of younger inhabitants to come along and start the cycle all over again. This way, you get people who know and love the area, they’re already part of the community, and they’re starting their families here.” In order to attract new residents to the Ridge Road area, North Arlington has dedicated some of its formerly vacant storefronts to new mom-and- pop businesses as well as restaurants, reserving other sites for single-bedroom, commuter housing that does not negatively impact its schools. “We currently have two newer projects that are all single bedroom, commuter-targeted housing, and each one of those units has parking to accommodate one spot per bedroom,” Pronti shares. “On top of that, we are planning to erect a parking garage, on Ridge Road, at our New Jersey Transit site, which would make it easier and more attractive for commuters to go to and from Manhattan, Jersey City, Newark, Harrison, etc. The newest portion of our plan is to acquire certain properties and turn them into parking, which would surely help in our residential zones. Parking is a tricky thing; we’ve had many discussions on it, and we believe that we have a few solutions.” Borough Council President, Mario Karcic, believes that North Arlington is a perfect “destination” for new residents who are likely to commute to other places for work. “We are in an ideal place, geographically,” he asserts. “From our main street, you can catch a bus and five minutes north takes you to Rutherford, where you can catch trains into the city (New York). If you go a couple of minutes south, it takes you into Harrison, where you can catch the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson rapid transit system), or you can go to Newark and take a train to